Eating In Translation

Myung San

There's nothing glitzy about sujebi.

Pop Sign World

Out front was a boneyard for failed businesses.

Tianjin Xian Bing

There's more beef than meets the eye.

"You can depend on the trust of the collective"

We've all cracked our share of fortune cookies. Occasionally they're amusing, more often, banal. And, clearly — since they're printed in English, except for the mini language lesson that exhorts you to "speak Chinese" — they're tailored for an American audience. (Fortune cookies exist abroad, too, but are considerably less common.)

So how did a message that evokes the people's communes find its way to a New York restaurant? I received this fortune (the flip side is blank) sometime around 1990, perhaps as early as the mid-1980s, very likely on the Upper West Side. I don't remember any more about my fellow diners or the occasion, but you can trust that we were eating family style.

"You can depend on the trust of the collective"
Fortune cookie collected c. 1990, New York

Old North Fresh and Fragrant Kebab Shop

(This venue is closed.) The proprietor, who hails from Jilin, in Northeast China, was quick to distinguish his kebabs from the more common (but also delicious) Xinjiang street-cart fare. Those Northwest Chinese skewers, cooked over charcoal, are uniformly smoky; his are cooked on a flattop and better maintain their own sense of style.

Shown here are pork "backstrap," the proprietor called it, while confirming that the chewy cut was tendon and not tenderloin, and chicken hearts ($3 total). The red-pepper seasoning is embellished by cumin.

Old North Fresh and Fragrant Kebab Shop
41-28 Main St. (at 41st Rd., downstairs), inside the Golden Mall, Flushing, Queens
347-884-3884

Competing roofline taco signs

On either side of Cypress Ave. (seen from the Myrtle Ave. intersection), Ridgewood, Queens

Dessert cart

If not for a few mobile vendors, this awkward space beside a supermarket driveway would go unused.

Cafe Niagara

(This venue is closed.) The name is the proprietor's nod to a "beautiful" vacation spot in upstate New York; the map hung near the door portrays his first home, Sri Lanka.

Gottscheer Hall Tap Room

My review appears in the January 26, 2011 edition of The New York Times. For photos, see my slideshow.

Mr. Lee's kueh stand

Stand? I wish I'd seen it roll up.